The primary tasks of the Foreign Trade Support Fund (FTSF) and its representatives abroad include gathering information on Slovak producers and products for the acquisition and promotion of the products of Slovak origin and providing basic marketing services to business entities of the Slovak Republic.

To support these activities the Fund invested large financial means into the WEB information centre to ensure a communication channel between Slovak firms, FTSF and other institutions involved in Slovak foreign trade. This information centre provides the following services free of charge:

a) presentation of information on Slovak firms, offered products, services, capacities and higher forms of business and production partnership using the database of Slovak firms in the world's commercial information system KOMPASS,

b) presentation of each firm that entered the KOMPASS system,

c) the possibility to search the database according to various selection criteria.

Information on the following issues will get to Slovakia through the FTSF information centre:

• on individual countries
• trade missions and exhibitions
• tenders
• potential partners
• potential markets
• economic development in individual countries
• economic relations

This information system will provide immediate information to potential Slovak exporters on the export possibilities for their products and mediate contacts with potential foreign customers. The system enables companies to search and view demands of foreign parties interested in co-operation, import and commodities. The FTSF representatives or commercial agencies of the Slovak Republic process these demands; subsequently, potential exporters are sought out and contacted in Slovakia.

The system also offers other information on the economic and legislative environment required for exports to individual territories where the FTSF representations are located. The system enables to search and view the results of the statistic analyses concerning foreign trade of the Slovak Republic created by the Strategic Decision-making Support System.

Slovak firms may register data on their firms and request that the inquiries from abroad are automatically sent to their e-mail addresses. To send an inquiry from abroad to the specific exporter takes only a few minutes.

The representatives obtain information through the information channel from the FTSF databases on Slovak producers and products for the acquisition and promotion of Slovak products. A Slovak exporter obtains information on the export possibilities via this system. Exporters are given an opportunity to present their export offers to abroad.